Arcadia YF-19 coming in 2014

[vlenhoff]

On 12/16/2016 at 2:48 PM, ArchieNov said:

No, it's not that. I have the same issue as vlenhoff. I've disassembled the joint to see what's causing it and I think they just angled that last ratchet the wrong way or something. Sometimes I find myself taking that joint apart and putting it back together collapsed because I'm also fearful of breaking it with too much force.

Thanks ArchiNov, I knew i could not be the only one. I will have to disassemble the joint then. I know something is wrong, i've never ever encountered such a tight joint. It is ridiculous.

[Scream Man]

Ive never been worried about breaking the joint, but mine are definitely stiff. Still ok on mine, and I transform my fighters a lot....

[vlenhoff]

13 minutes ago, Scream Man said:

Ive never been worried about breaking the joint, but mine are definitely stiff. Still ok on mine, and I transform my fighters a lot....

I totally understand Scream Man, but there is a difference between a very stiff joint, and a frozen one. I have broken pens and pencils with less force... Yes I am joking, but this thing is frighteningly stiff. I think the only way to resolve this is to disassemble the joint, and hopefully find out a way to make it work properly. My Yamato YF-19 is perfectly fine in that area. I may have to call James May to reassemble this. 

[Scream Man]

Let me get home from the trip Im on and double check, see if I can offer any tips. Ill message again in 24hrs

Edited January 1, 2017 by Scream Man

[no3Ljm]

22 hours ago, lmtsuper said:

Is the re-released Aracdia YF19 generally better quality than the first release (tighter joints)? I always want a Arcadia YF19, Jungle has several Arcadia's YF19 in stock, how do you know it is re-release version?

The only way to find out is email them. But seeing that YF-19's are already there even before the reissues this year then it's safe to assume those are probably from the first release.

[Scream Man]

On 1/1/2017 at 11:13 PM, vlenhoff said:

I totally understand Scream Man, but there is a difference between a very stiff joint, and a frozen one. I have broken pens and pencils with less force... Yes I am joking, but this thing is frighteningly stiff. I think the only way to resolve this is to disassemble the joint, and hopefully find out a way to make it work properly. My Yamato YF-19 is perfectly fine in that area. I may have to call James May to reassemble this. 

Ok, so longer than 24 hours  

i have transformed it back and forth a couple of times,and i dunno what makes it stick, but i also didnt have a worry with it. I shifted the legs back and forth several times and no hint of damage. 

[Chronocidal]

I got to cutting up some scrap plastic tonight, and might have a fairly viable solution for the wing hinges.

Those are cut from roughly 1/16" sheet styrene, and very carefully filed to shape.  The gray one was made first, before I realized I could strengthen the actual wing pivot by extending it to the rear, and it would still fit inside the wing when folded up. 

End result?  It works great.  I sandwiched both those brackets together inside the wing and closed up the wing glove, and it rotates nicely, just like the original Yamato YF-19's wing.  However, you can see I've got two copies here, and I actually went through one other before realizing that this might need to be made of thin metal.  The original wing brackets were very finely shaped, and fit very tightly around the wing pivot points, which means the pivots were also really thin.  Those little rings are fragile, and probably won't hold up to many transformations.

But they work, the bracket basically locks the wing pivot in the unextended pivot position, and lets the wing rotate back to fold in for battroid mode.  The location may not be exact, but it's close enough for my taste.

I'm going to get a master pattern drawn up with measurements via caliper, and see if anyone wants to give it a shot with something a little better than styrene.

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Chronocidal

[Sandman]

Wow that's incredible the stuff you guys can do. I on the otherhand not that handy.

[Xigfrid]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I got to cutting up some scrap plastic tonight, and might have a fairly viable solution for the wing hinges.

Those are cut from roughly 1/16" sheet styrene, and very carefully filed to shape.  The gray one was made first, before I realized I could strengthen the actual wing pivot by extending it to the rear, and it would still fit inside the wing when folded up. 

End result?  It works great.  I sandwiched both those brackets together inside the wing and closed up the wing glove, and it rotates nicely, just like the original Yamato YF-19's wing.  However, you can see I've got two copies here, and I actually went through one other before realizing that this might need to be made of thin metal.  The original wing brackets were very finely shaped, and fit very tightly around the wing pivot points, which means the pivots were also really thin.  Those little rings are fragile, and probably won't hold up to many transformations.

But they work, the bracket basically locks the wing pivot in the unextended pivot position, and lets the wing rotate back to fold in for battroid mode.  The location may not be exact, but it's close enough for my taste.

I'm going to get a master pattern drawn up with measurements via caliper, and see if anyone wants to give it a shot with something a little better than styrene.

 

Congratulations to this!

So if I understand well, you loose the High-Speed mode with this modification ?

If you want a great result and more importantly cheap, I would go with acrylic laser cut. A lot of company offer laser cut from PDF or dwg files.

To make the drawings, the easiest way is to scan the part with a copier that can send a pdf file, then make it as a drawing and have a few dimensions checked manually with the caliper.

Can you take a few pictures of the results with the wing rotating ? I am still interested in making a version with the high speed mode.

 

[Mommar]

Kind of sad we have to find ways to fix their horrible designs.

[jenius]

Someone before came up with a simple detent system that locked the wing in either position (forward or high speed). I'll go looking for it after work if someone doesn't find it sooner. 

[Chronocidal]

I'm sure with a little work, you could add some dimples to the swing bars and add some tension to them so they snap into place.  This is just a quick hack-job replacement that'll remove the feature.

I'm really not sure how to search for anything on these forums though.  The search function is useless 90% of the time, and can't seem to find the simplest things.  Seriously, typing nothing but "YF-19" into the search box brought up 0 results, despite this topic sitting at the top of the list.

I'd love to find a reliable way to lock the wings in all three positions, I'm just not sure how much modifying of the original wing I want to do.  The nice thing about this mounting bracket is that it's just a straight swap out for the swing bar, with no changes to the original parts (damage to screw covers notwithstanding).

What this doesn't fix is the fact that the wing still floats on its pivot, and doesn't rest against the leg at all.  I do remember a mod that added a tab that fit into the wing's root and both locked into the outer leg panel to hold the wing steady, and also tabbed into a slot in the wing glove when the wing was folded, but the tab sat in the track for the swing bar, effectively eliminating the high speed mode.  That tab would probably be an idea match to this mounting bracket, if you just want to be rid of the high speed mode entirely.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Chronocidal

[Xigfrid]

I don't know if Jenius refers to my quick fix: http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?/topic/39470-arcadia-yf-19-coming-in-2014/&page=169#comment-1246175

 

since the pictures are down, i just made new ones. As you can see, the tab helps the wing to stay in the good forward position, no change for the high speed mode since this one is very solid and it also doesn't interfere with the battroid mode. 

 

But i really think that creating a mechanism inside could bring a more solid solution in the 3 positions and also restricting the movements of the wing that can look crazy in some positions...

 

[Xigfrid]

Just saw this on Sculpteo. Since I've already tried it, I wouldn't recommend their 3D printing over Shapeways, but the Laser cutting should be fine and would suffer little concurrence.

https://www.sculpteo.com/blog/2017/01/11/sculpteos-laser-cut-metal-service-is-available

I can see how you can sandwich 3 layers of 1mm and making a super strong design... Only thing is to have the good design for the 3 modes...

 

 

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, the 3-mode design is killer, and while I know there is a good way to do it, I'm not sure if there's a good way to do it that's easily accessible to hobbyists.

Honestly, the existing swing arm is the simplest solution, it just needs some kind of ratcheted motion, or internal locking mechanism to keep the wing in a stable position.  Getting those detents built into it might take a complete redesign of both the wing and the glove, because the wing needs to snap into place in all three positions, and there's nothing to do that now, on either the Bandai or Arcadia versions.

[vlenhoff]

On 1/4/2017 at 0:45 AM, Scream Man said:

Ok, so longer than 24 hours  

i have transformed it back and forth a couple of times,and i dunno what makes it stick, but i also didnt have a worry with it. I shifted the legs back and forth several times and no hint of damage. 

Thanks for the help Scream Man,

I think this definitely means you got a good version of it. I totally can see my issue escaping QC control easily. Unless they transform all of them, i don't see how will they catch this issue. So sad, and this was my first Macross purchase in many years, lol. Anyway, it will be a while before i get to disassemble it. Arcadia!  My Yamatos are intact and perfect in every way. crap happens, everyone makes mistakes. I'll forgive you this time Arcadia 

[no3Ljm]

14 minutes ago, vlenhoff said:

Thanks for the help Scream Man,

I think this definitely means you got a good version of it. I totally can see my issue escaping QC control easily. Unless they transform all of them, i don't see how will they catch this issue. So sad, and this was my first Macross purchase in many years, lol. Anyway, it will be a while before i get to disassemble it. Arcadia!  My Yamatos are intact and perfect in every way. crap happens, everyone makes mistakes. I'll forgive you this time Arcadia 

Wrong color. Loose joints. QC errors. Others. Yup, we always forgive Arcadia. 

 

[wm cheng]

11 minutes ago, no3Ljm said:

...we always forgive Arcadia. 

 

Yeah!  Why is that?  It always seems like they can do no wrong and everyone around here has got a "hate-on" for Bandai. 

 

I'm certainly not giving Arcadia a free pass anymore, especially with the prices they are commanding these days for their naked bare Valkyries.

[vlenhoff]

1 minute ago, wm cheng said:

Yeah!  Why is that?  It always seems like they can do no wrong and everyone around here has got a "hate-on" for Bandai. 

 

I'm certainly not giving Arcadia a free pass anymore, especially with the prices they are commanding these days for their naked bare Valkyries.

Why is that?

I have to be realistic, and think there might be another offering i can't resist in the future. Nothing is ever perfect, but I know errors happen. I was once a little insensible to the bandai situation, but i just didn't know enough of it before i made my opinion. I made that mistake, and i apologize for it. 

I know man, hard earned cash goes to these pieces of art, and then this happens... At least itis not like in the dark ages when a chunkey monkey costed 1,200 bucks  

[Chronocidal]

I believe a lot of the good will toward Arcadia is a carry-over from Yamato.  Yamato made it clear they were entirely aware of their overseas customers, and were willing to go the extra mile to help support them in little ways.  Arcadia?  Not so much, and their slow pace of releases is making their mistakes just that much more visible.

In terms of Bandai vs Arcadia though... it's becoming a tough call.  From a top-level view though, I want to say while both have made some dumb design choices, Arcadia's tend to be more of the "this doesn't work so well" variety, where Bandai tends more toward the "this will explode into a million pieces" type.

From my personal experience, most of Arcadia's gaffes have been in terms of aesthetics (i.e. paint colors or lack of tampo), and some sloppy designs that may not work great, but don't actually break.  And of the few things I have broken, they've generally been pretty easy to fix.

On the flip side of that, if I added up the total number of pieces I've ever broken on any Arcadia or Yamato valk, it doesn't even come close to the number of broken shards that one of my CF-171s is still laying in to this day.

 

 

Edited January 12, 2017 by Chronocidal

[no3Ljm]

54 minutes ago, wm cheng said:

Yeah!  Why is that?  It always seems like they can do no wrong and everyone around here has got a "hate-on" for Bandai. 

I'm certainly not giving Arcadia a free pass anymore, especially with the prices they are commanding these days for their naked bare Valkyries.

I'm not so sure what's the exact answer to this. But all I know about myself is that I'm just probably forgiving for this kind of things. I mean, nothing is perfect. Even for things that are so expensive, it's still not as perfect. There will always be some flaw about it. Why am I so forgiving about Arcadia? Probably one reason is that no other company yet is making the same thing that they're making. So there's no way to compare them with other company. Except for that one rare thing which is the VF-19 Advance. Meaning there's no competition for that specific scale with the same Macross series. I know they're just tied into the old series and maybe some few that we don't know but not the current series. And that for me is ok. Let's say they got the color shade wrong. For me, I'll just ignore it since there's no one making the same thing that has the right color. So might as well swallow my pride and just get it. We can still sell it afterwards if there's better one out there that's coming out.  

Regarding price. Yeah, they're expensive as is. But that's how it is. And Bandai is following suit as well. Not as much as Arcadia but you know they're getting there too. Just compare the MSRP posted on the Tamashii page for their Macross stuff (DX VF-31's). It's not as it used to be. Arcadia, I will understand more because they're smaller company than Bandai. Bandai has lots of budget to pay for rights, producing stuff, etc. Whereas Arcadia, they have to take it out on us as well... probably. I guess, that's another reason too why we pay more.

But yeah, even with their current price, I'll still stick to my 2 Reactive Armor Set order.

 

[Chronocidal]

Got a pattern pretty much finalized for that simple wing mount.  I made two copies by hand from ~1mm thickness styrene, sandwiched them in the wing, and mounted them in one wing glove, and they work great.  No collisions with the legs or arms, and the wing rotates smoothly on it. 

I think my measurement (read: eyeballing it) was a little off, and the wing might have shifted inward a little, but this actually had a beneficial effect.  With the wing mounted and swept forward, there was actually very little play in the wingsweep, and the wing would only tip backwards a small amount before colliding with the leg.

I'm going to load up some CAD software and get a properly dimensioned file built up for sending out to get a few manufactured, but here's a scan of the final pattern.

The original swingbars are a little under 2 mm thick, and this piece came out at 2.04 mm, so depending on the material, 2 mm thickness sounds like the way to go.

[David Hingtgen]

Does the wing split apart readily to install this?

[Chronocidal]

That's probably the most tricky and risky part, it'll depend on if they're glued well.  There's about an inch and a half on the leading edge of both my wings that isn't glued down, and it was enough to spread them to remove the swing bars.

Sadly, not much of a way to get around this.  I've actually considered trying to pop mine apart entirely, since they look slightly misaligned where they were glued, and it seems to cause the tips to warp downwards some.  I wound up remembering how some folks got cracked and broken wings at release, and decided not to risk pulling them all the way apart.

I'm currently trying to figure out how to get a file exported to that Sculpteo laser cutting site, but their plugin for google sketchup isn't working.  If anyone has the equipment to try making a copy of the part, I can upload a DXF/DWG/3DS/whatever here to give it a try.

[Xigfrid]

Do you try to upload the DWG exported file from sketchup? this file is not good because the lines are not "connected": you don't have a continuous lines. 

At this point, you can try to export a 300dpi jpg and have this jpg vectorized. I can make this step at work or if you have a photoshop, it does the vectorized contours automatically. Or certainly a few website would also do that. 

[Chronocidal]

I was able to get the .svg plugin to work, just needed a slightly older version of sketchup.  Been playing with the Sculpteo site settings now, it's pretty simple.

Looking like metal is going to be rather expensive, and I might need to tweak the tolerances, but they offer 2 mm POM as a material, and I can get a set of 4 of those for about $12, so I might give them a shot.  Should deliver some time next week, assuming they process correctly.

Edit: So for Sketchup just can't make connected lines in any format it seems.  The site doesn't say it's a problem for POM printing, but it won't do metal that way.

I'll probably have to install some better CAD software instead, I thought I could get away with being lazy.   Least I've got the base pattern file drawn up though.  I just need something that does actual curves, and not polylines.

Edited January 15, 2017 by Chronocidal

[Chronocidal]

So, after playing CAD hopscotch all day, I finally got the Sculpteo site to accept my patterns.  Ordered one pair in stainless steel, and two pair in POM.  If the POM holds up, that's the way to go, they came out to about $2.50 a piece.

Shipping came out to almost as much as the entire order though, guess that's what you get ordering from France.  I'll probably look at using someone more local in the future.

[Xigfrid]

Sculpteo is also based in the USA, I thought also that their US team was greater than the French one.  

[Chronocidal]

I'll see if the parts come out useable as-is next week some time.  The POM process requires a 0.13 mm border to give room for the laser, but the metal says it cuts exact sizes, so I might need to clean up the edges of the plastic ones.

In the meantime, I installed the two sets of handmade ones, and they're holding up ok in fighter mode.  Did make one small mistake, and didn't realize that the wingroots use two different sizes of screws, and I made a little bump on top of one wing where the screw tried to go in too far.  It's hidden under the root though, so not a big deal for me.

The plastic I used might be a tiny bit too thick, so I might sand down the plates, but that extra thickness is providing a nice tight sliding action into the wing, so it's not all bad.

Edit:  have to admit, the wings feel a bit wobbly, so some higher strength materials will help, but it's just really satisfying finally being able to do this:

Edited January 16, 2017 by Chronocidal

[Slave IV]

Finally got this guy after eying it and hearing/seeing/reading so much about it:

 

It's pretty finicky in Fighter mode, ugly in Gerwalk mode but Robot mode is beautiful and super solid (other than the leg Fast Packs). Really nice figure that will be spending most of its time in Bot mode and probably donating the arsenal that came with it to some other, less armed Valks.

Edited January 20, 2017 by Slave IV

[Chronocidal]

I personally prefer fighter mode for pretty much everything, but this one really does shine in battroid.  I do wish they'd opted to make the lower legs slightly longer to lessen the gap around the knee joint, but it's part of what makes battroid so stocky and close to the lineart.

I think fighter mode was done a bit better by the Bandai VF-19 Advanced, but it still made a few compromises for certain details, and while a bit more sturdy, their version of the high speed mode mechanism has the same sloppy alignment issues as this one. 

One thing I didn't think about earlier, the diagrams for sticker placement in the instructions are straight-up CAD renders.  I might scan those in and see about designing an entirely new wing mechanism.

[aaajin]

10 hours ago, Slave IV said:

Finally got this guy after eying it and hearing/seeing/reading so much about it:

It's pretty finicky in Fighter mode, ugly in Gerwalk mode but Robot mode is beautiful and super solid (other than the leg Fast Packs). Really nice figure that will be spending most of its time in Bot mode and probably donating the arsenal that came with it to some other, less armed Valks.

Transformation's a breeze, plus battroid & fighter look perfect, well at least compared to the old Yamato.

Bought mine before Bandai's Advanced came out, so at that time it was the best representative of the 19 in toy form. 

Gerwalk is definitely better than Yamato's. IIRC the old version does not lock together well & was a floppy mess especially in the chest area. Well, any fond memories handling Yamato's 19 probably have been erased from my memories anyways.

[no3Ljm]

On 1/20/2017 at 10:23 AM, Slave IV said:

Finally got this guy after eying it and hearing/seeing/reading so much about it:

 

It's pretty finicky in Fighter mode, ugly in Gerwalk mode but Robot mode is beautiful and super solid (other than the leg Fast Packs). Really nice figure that will be spending most of its time in Bot mode and probably donating the arsenal that came with it to some other, less armed Valks.

I just remembered that for whatever reason, the shoulder pivot joint uses a different shade of tan. Have to go back and check if those are diecast metal rather than plastic since it's not the same shade as the shoulder armor.

 

[PsYcHoDyNaMiX]

2 hours ago, no3Ljm said:

I just remembered that for whatever reason, the shoulder pivot joint uses a different shade of tan. Have to go back and check if those are diecast metal rather than plastic since it's not the same shade as the shoulder armor.

 

They are indeed diecast metal shoulders (the pivoting joint/part).

[no3Ljm]

40 minutes ago, PsYcHoDyNaMiX said:

They are indeed diecast metal shoulders (the pivoting joint/part).

Thanks!